Re: EDD Plus Project

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Charlie wrote:
> "Bryan Parkoff" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message 

> > Why do you desire to capture floppy disk into image?
>
>
> I have about 1000 floppies (most not copy protected) and disk2fdi is by far 
> the fastest way to make archive images of them (.do, etc.).  FDI need be 
> used only for copy protected disks since the files are large and the process 
> slow.

Of course, using a PC drive to capture images requires a special
hardware hack to capture the "back" side of any double-sided disk.

Also, can a PC floppy deal with half- and quarter-tracks?

There's the software issue of dealing with unrecorded areas that
cannot be read repeatably.  And, of course, for a protected disk,
there is no simple way to determine whether a sector/track has been
read correctly except by re-reading--and this requires that "soft"
(unrecorded) bits be tolerated at the risk of accepting errors.

There doesn't seem to be any way to escape the need for testing
to demonstrate that the correct information was captured.  ;-(

> > I wonder why FDI does not work or can't read copy-protected image from 
> > floppy disk.
>
>
> Disk2fdi does work on (read) most (maybe all) copy protected Apple ][ disks. 
> At least it should but as of now there is no way to check the resulting 
> images.
>
> >   If it is true that you expect to capture floppy disk into image 100% 
> > accurately, it may not be possible to emulate FDI format into Apple II 
> > Emulator successfully.
>
>
> I don't see why not.  But again I'm no expert on emulating a floppy drive. 
> There is an Amiga (I think) emulator that supports FDI and Ciderpress can 
> read FDIs of DOS/ProDOS disks.
>
>
> >   I have been reviewing over threads.  Nobody is interested to write FDI 
> > program inside Apple II Emulator.
>
>
> True :-(
>
>
> >   I thought that the software should be able to capture Apple II floppy 
> > diks into image using EDD+ card.  Does it?
>
>
> I don't know.  I never owned an EDD+ card.

It allows faithful reading of the bit stream, subject to the standard
limitation on noise being read as data in regions with more than a few
consecutive zeroes.

It still requires knowing what needs to be captured to satisfy any given
protection scheme, which complicates knowing whether or not you have
actually captured it until the image has been tested.

You may recall that all copy programs, including EDD 4+, required the
user to copy some programs multiple times until a working copy was
achieved...

-michael

NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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